Chapter 43

The mechanical god offered sincere praise: “Magnificent power.” Such a mighty heat; such destructive force. “And yet…that is not enough to harm me. What a shame. Even your last desperate attempt was futile. All of it is meaningless. All’s right with the world.” And it still didn’t work. His body was originally metal. It should not have been able to withstand Dell Soleige’s heat, and yet the armor remained unscathed. The faith earned from the six-realms mechanism made its composition almost entirely magical. No physical damage worked, and with a logical strength on the level of the aethernet—the whole world—no magical effects worked, either. Not even ultimate magic like Dell Stella or Dell Soleige. The ten thousand souls stored inside the six-realms mechanism were forced to point their faith toward the Progenitor, and they ran through their life spans 4.32 billion times faster than normal, repeating a cycle of life and death as their faith was turned into mana, constantly observed, and thus establishing the Atlas’s magic and existence. A rough estimate of the time it had until all souls were worn out from the repeating cycle and lost their value as complete data—that is, until the six-realms mechanism stopped—was of about 311 trillion 40 billion years. Enough time to create a peaceful world. God’s logic was the world’s logic. No individual could overturn it. “Now receive divine punishment.” Punishment to the fool who dared aim a bow at a god. The pattern of light ran across his whole body. Yet Gungnir did not activate. “…What?” The six-realms mechanism and the Gungnir launcher on the Atlas’s orbits were functioning correctly. He immediately ran a scan, and the situation was made clear. The divine body itself had no issue. The issue was within the surrounding aether. It wasn’t as sparse as it was in Yokohama. It was zero. That was Dell Soleige’s side effect and the crux of Veltol’s plan: aether incineration. The moment Dell Soleige hit, the airborne aether within several kilometers was burned in a chain reaction, momentarily bringing the aether levels to zero. Gungnir functioned by using the aether in its straight-line aim. Without aether around the Atlas, activating it was impossible. Dell Soleige was never meant to defeat the Atlas—only to prevent it from using Gungnir. Its mana detection was also nullified by the surrounding aether disappearing. Once the aether returned, it showed countless mana reactions. “What…?” They came from overhead. The Atlas looked up. “It’s all useless…” A black meteor shower coming from the other side of the hole in the sky opened by the flames of destruction. Dell Stella, split in hundreds. Among the meteor shower hid one dragon. One giant dragon and three people on its back, descending. To kill God. “We can block Gungnir, but what about that sword?” Gram asked. “The Atlas’s sword…if we can call it that…is no regular sword. We should assume it has some sort of magic to it.” “Should I stop it with my body?” Sihlwald suggested. “No, that would not work,” Veltol replied. “Blocking it directly can only mean trouble so long as we don’t know what magic it holds. And I want you in top form, Sister.” “There’s no one but me, then,” Gram said. “Your job is to protect me until I finish my spell, remember?” Machina retorted. “She’s right. And since we will have my sister’s assault hidden among Dell Stella’s mana, I will need some cooldown time as well. We need to fill that void somehow…” The Hero, the Demon Lord, the Black Dragon, and the Duchess of the Dazzling Blaze went back and forth, when one person timidly raised their hand. “Umm…” The dragon fell. A giant black dragon fell among the black stars from the sky opened by the flames of destruction. Using the split Dell Stella as a decoy, the dragon dived from overhead toward the mechanical god. On its snout stood one girl, her long blond hair fluttering in the wind. She, Hizuki, looked straight at the iron titan, while behind her waited Veltol and Takahashi. Veltol’s magic prevented them from being thrown into the air so long as they remained in contact with Sihlwald’s body. “Okay…,” Hizuki said as she brushed her hair to the side and traced her finger across her nape. No Familia there, as she had lent it to Takahashi. Her mission was to block the gargantuan titan’s attack that would come during their approach. She thought back on the strategy meeting. “Umm…” Hizuki timidly raised her hand. “We just have to stop that giant sword, right? In that case, I can probably do it…” “…Are you sure?” Machina asked. She knew better than anyone else about Hizuki’s power. Naturally, she wondered if she could truly execute such a tall order. “Y-yeah. Probably. I think… No.” After initial doubt, Hizuki spoke with determination. “I will. Trust me.” Her eyes of distinct colors showed as much anxiety as confidence. “Understood.” Veltol nodded. “It’s in your hands, then, Hizuki.” Machina didn’t object further, and the plan was set. There was no need for her to say anything once her lord had decided on it. No suspicion. No discussion. No one opposed it, and no one asked how. They all trusted her. Thinking clearly about it, this wasn’t something a teenage girl could deal with. Hizuki had little experience in combat, and even she realized how big this enemy was. This was not a foe she could defeat. But as far as blocking the skyscraper-sized sword of a thousand-foot giant came, Hizuki did not find it impossible. She could do this. Maybe. Probably. Most likely. She had to. She didn’t find it impossible, but she had no certainty she could do it. She only had a vague feeling she just might. Yet no one there doubted her affirmation that she could perform such a feat. No one asked why, nor how. “And I cannot fail after he said it’s in my hands now…” She didn’t get the current situation, and there was no time to ask about it. Even the fact that she was riding a giant dragon was irrelevant. She felt her friends’ anger. That was reason enough for her to risk her life. The power inside her screamed. It told her it was possible. It told her she could do this. Why? She could feel the oddly specific reason of wanting to show her power, her best side, to the man she liked. “Weal and woe, come to my hand.” A short incantation; a short prayer. She called the name of the power that lived within her—that which ruled over joy and misfortune. “Meldia Install!” The Crown adorned her head, the Orb in her right orbit shone gold, and the Blade graced her hand. “That’s…” “Meldia’s vestiges?” Takahashi and Veltol spoke behind her. They were copies of the goddess. The three regalia stored in Hizuki’s soul manifested to call the goddess of weal and woe into her body. As the remains of the power of the goddess Meldia temporarily possessed her body, Hizuki’s scarlet eye turned golden. “Let’s do this.” The Atlas noticed the approach of the Black Dragon and received the decoy Dell Stella as it swung the giant sword in its hand. “That thing’s attack won’t be a simple slash,” Hizuki muttered, her voice with more elegant timbre than usual. Her right golden eye perceived details normally invisible. On the tip of the sword was a spell to release vast amounts of mana in the shape of a fan. Unlike Gungnir’s straight-line aether mediation, the aether incineration had little effect on this simple mana output. It lagged behind Gungnir’s range and precision but overcame it in destructive power. However, none of that mattered to her. “How could a newly born god defeat me…?!” The words came out of Hizuki’s mouth, with her unawares. Hizuki’s clothes did not change like they did in Akihabara, nor did the goddess’s conscience overtake hers. It was only a vestige of the goddess inside her, but even still, it was strong enough to influence her. The golden blade shone even brighter. It then grew bigger. To be precise, a light-gold edge enveloped it. Everyone on the battlefield and the onlookers from Goar saw the mirage of a gigantic golden sword. “Grraaaaahhh!” Hizuki swung the golden sword, radiant under the night sky, its scale not behind the Atlas’s. The copy of goddess Meldia’s blade clashed with the Atlas’s sword. Thunder shook the air. The manifestation of the fate-bending might of the goddess. The absolutism of fortune. The power to make the foe’s roll of the dice marginal and their own roll maximal. The cheat to force a 1 while she got a 10. The concept of certain victory, no matter the foe’s power, so long as they were upon the same game board. The antithesis of common sense of weaponry. It was only natural an old god defeated a new one. The result—the Atlas’s destructive mana wound up a dud. The Atlas had the upper hand in mass and mana output, yet it was blown back from the clash. The possibility of a man sliding through a wall upon crashing against it. It became reality. No magic. The might of Heaven. The uncanny power of God. Hizuki could tell the mechanical god was taken aback by the result. So she said: “Serves you right.” Most of Hizuki’s mana was held back when Meldia remained sealed back in Akihabara, but her real mana reserve equaled that of the Six Dark Peers. With Meldia’s added to that, it easily surpassed the comparison. It didn’t reach the level of her full incarnation in Akihabara, but Hizuki had succeeded in pulling a shred of the goddess’s might sleeping deep within her soul once a day. “Now then…” There was only one downside to this power, coming from her inexperience. The balance tipped back to misfortune, to counter the received luck. “Phew… What should I do now…?” The descent disconnected, the regalia vanished, and the loss of the goddess’s might left her floating in the air. Then came the free fall. In counterbalance for blocking the attack, misfortune struck, and Hizuki slipped off the dragon’s back. The gelid sea awaited below. “I-I’m gonna die…!” The girl carrying the old goddess fell down. Sihlwald flew in sync with gravity, downward. Not a fall. She deliberately flew toward the sea. Her two twisted horns pointed to the heavens as her giant body flew. Jet-black scales and crust, giant wings, sharp claws, sturdy jaw, long and thick tail, golden eyes. This ferocious form was the Black Dragon, Sihlwald’s, true nature. Not the shape of a little girl. Her original form. Flying with that body, with this planet’s gravity and atmospheric density, was impossible. Her mass, her frame, the shape of her wings—the flight of a dragon went against the laws of physics. A dragon should not be able to fly. And yet she did. That disregard for all laws of physics was real magic. There was only one explanation for a dragon being able to fly: because it was a dragon. By her flapping her wings, the aether around produced lift, and by moving in the same way as flying magic, she was freed from the curse of gravity and lured to the skies. A dragon did not fly through the sky—the sky flew through the dragon. People called that the Dragonwing Effect. “Excellent work.” Sihlwald silently commended the screaming blond girl as she saw her fall, from the corner of her eye. There was no time to catch her in the air, but surely the girl who achieved such a grand feat would be all right. And grand a feat it was. The only other ways to stop the Atlas’s sword would be with the Hero’s Holy Sword or Sihlwald’s body. Gram had to protect Machina, and, even if Sihlwald could take it, if Takahashi and Veltol got embroiled in the hit, the plan would fail. She liked human women. Even more so if they were strong and beautiful. For Sihlwald, this feeling for humans was similar to what they felt for pets and other small animals. Beautiful hair; good boys and girls; strong; pleasant. They were merely objects or protection, or food. With only one exception, dragons and men were not equals. Aoba was not such an exception. “And even so.” It didn’t change the fact that she was her disciple, the successor of her believer’s soul. “You will pay for killing her, false god.” Her only objective was to get rid of the Atlas. She flapped her wings and accelerated beyond sound. Maintaining the momentum, she crashed into the mechanical god. “Goh—” Her front limbs, hind limbs, claws, tail, fangs, every part of her attacked it. “—aaarrrrrrr!” The Black Dragon roared as she bit and clawed at the god. The timbre of the steel tearing apart echoed across the ocean. After it withstood the stars and flames of annihilation, for the first time, wounds appeared in the Atlas’s body. The claws and fangs of the one worshipped in ancient times as the god of the dragons could harm even the principles of the world itself. And yet despite wounding it, she didn’t get far enough to kill it. It was only a matter of time before it flung her off. So… “Go!” “Go!” Pushed by his sister’s voice, Veltol held the Dark Sword in one hand while holding Takahashi in the other and jumped off Sihlwald onto the Atlas’s head. From the Atlas’s point of view, Veltol and Takahashi were flies. It could ignore them, but having them fly around was annoying. Still, the mechanical god couldn’t swat them away while the dragon’s bite kept it in place. Most of the aether surrounding the Atlas had returned, so it initialized Gungnir to shoot away the flies. “I won’t let you!” The dragon’s giant fist held the Atlas’s hand and twisted its head upward. Gungnir burned off a bit of Sihlwald as it pierced the skies. While feeling the wind, Veltol thought. Everyone was carrying out the plan perfectly. It was nothing complicated. Dodge all of the Atlas’s attacks, get Takahashi on top of it, and destroy the magic that composed it from within. That was it. Veltol felt no great significance from this battle. His aim wasn’t to stop the god from ruling the world. His only drive was his personal feelings. His wish to take revenge for his friend. “Exult in the silver skies: Vernal Diel.” The Dark Sword in his hand turned into an aether blade, shining silver. He stabbed it into the Atlas’s head as he landed. They would use the Dark Sword as the connection terminal, the same way they did for unlocking the seal on the remote shrine. The blade dug into the body incapable of receiving any attack, physical or magical, having changed into an immortal-like composition and obtained logical strength on the level of the aethernet. If the Atlas, being live magic, couldn’t be affected by the aether, then naturally, it shouldn’t be able to affect the aether. Which meant it wouldn’t be able to use Gungnir, as it used aether as a medium. The fact it did meant that aether could affect it. The common standard of magic that defined it as coming from interference with aether created this security hole. Veltol ground his teeth. He had the easiest job. His hacking skills were mere child’s play compared to those of the girl standing beside him. Only she could take care of what came next. It was the wizard’s limelight. He gulped down his impotence and let her take care of the rest. “Takahashi. It’s your turn.” “Yeah,” she replied, nodding. Takahashi touched the Dark Sword’s pommel. Fumbling control over it could mean death, and Veltol was keeping it under control. Takahashi connected to God through the sword. “It’s in your hands, Takahashi.” A sensation like falling. Takahashi used the Familia she borrowed from Hizuki to dive into the Atlas’s technic through Vernal Diel. There was no Black ICE, no logical barriers upon diving. She quickly reached the core of the program. Diving was life-threatening, so one usually wore additional defense units, such as Scapegoats or Pebble Raincoats, but there was no time to prepare them. Fortunately, security was like paper here. The Familia loaded the program composing the Atlas as visual data and showed it as a virtual space. If one were to describe the aethernet as a chaotic sea of stars, then the Atlas’s program was like an artificial whirlpool in the middle of the ocean. Like a celestial body time lapse, light mixed and spun rapidly in the middle of the hollow sea, forming a vortex. Since the Atlas’s program was on the level of the aethernet, she had already expected the software to visualize that the latter would be compatible with the former. What differed from the aethernet was that the light vortex didn’t come from communication between machines but from forced faith—from the souls of the citizens of Yokohama turned into data. “What…? How…did you get in?” The incorporeal voice of the Progenitor echoed in Takahashi’s head. His confusion was only natural. He thought he was perfect, and a foreign agent intruded. “Get…out of me!” Part of the light vortex turned into a wave and enveloped Takahashi’s body. A vast data stream that could fry her brain. The only security method the Progenitor had. Takahashi’s extraordinary processing power, however, withstood the brain-frying storm. This was the gift of the girl who was untalented in magic battle. “What are you trying to do?! Stop! Sinner! Don’t get in the way of world peace! Of my wish! I’ll correct the cruelty and chaos of this world! This is justice!” “Shut up.” Her voice came out colder and more hostile than she had ever heard. “You couldn’t pay me enough money to sit through one of your lectures. I’m here to kill you. Stop struggling, and it’ll be over quick.” “W-wait! If you kill me, the ten thousand citizens—!” Takahashi muted the Progenitor’s voice and immediately constructed a program to protect herself from the data stream. She had a full grasp on the skill gap. The Progenitor was an absolute noob in hack warfare. There was no need for decoys, masks, spoofing, wicker man, not even bargaining. Takahashi’s job was simple. “I’ll kill you.” Kill all these people, including some acquaintances and one friend. Massacre the ten thousand souls of the Yokohama homunculi. Destroy this vortex. “I’m gonna kill you…and it’s gonna be so freakin’ easy. You toy with people’s lives and make yourself out to be a god when you’re nothing but a shithead lowlife. And this shitty program you threw together? It sucks. You’re dead, asshole!” Takahashi typed on the 3D keyboard and the telepathic keyboard at the same time, opening myriad windows to execute the virus she improvised—the god-slaying poison. The malware deleted part of the spell that composed the technic and modified other parts of the program to wreck the logic of the magic. It was compatible with any sort of program. A toy for aether hackers outside of Yokohama that the standard security software in a Familia could deal with. “Too bad you don’t have one. You can’t even stop this little toy…! And it’s gonna be this flimsy code that kills you!” Were this the aethernet, which overcame the first law by tolerating contradictions, it would be like throwing a pebble into the sea. The aethernet could repair its program automatically. But the Atlas’s “perfected” technic, while obtaining a sturdy if uniform logical strength through faith, had not overcome the first law. It did not allow for contradictions. She was sure of it the moment she plugged in. While on the same scale as the aethernet, it lacked its chaos. A change in one word of the spell could cause the magic to throw an error, and with a domino effect, the rest of the logic would collapse, and the vortex would vanish. As a result, the six-realms mechanism powered by this vortex of faith would come to a halt, stop supplying mana, and the magic of the Atlas would evaporate. The moment Takahashi heard the words Progenitor, faith, and technic on the scale of the aethernet, she knew how to slay the god. The Atlas was invincible to attacks from the outside, but defenseless from the inside. It was only Takahashi in this world who could have figured it out. She simply had to execute the virus. That was it. Victory was in her hands the moment she survived the counterattack. Everything would be over the moment she pressed the enter key. “Push it…” Regret. No. Don’t. What if? What if you could save her? What if a miracle happened? I don’t want to kill you. Aoba, Aoba, Aoba—the words revolved in her mind. What if Aoba could recover her body? What if they could put her soul in another container? What if some sort of miracle happened? What if everything went right? What if, what if, what if, what if, what if? But upon seeing the vortex, in the back of her mind, Takahashi knew. Extracting one fruit from a juice mixed from ten thousand was impossible. Saving Aoba was impossible. She was dead. Her skin, her flesh, her bones turned to light right before her eyes. So at the very least, it had to be her. “PUSH IT…!” How many times had she fumed whenever she saw a character hesitate in moments like this in works of fiction? She believed she would never. That she would not let herself be driven by selfishness or emotion and would only do the most rational thing. She scoffed at the characters for hesitating to kill their friends turned monsters, their families deprived of their will, their lovers better off dead. It was just fiction. She could do it if she were in their place. And now she was. Time to prove it. They’d only spent a few days together. Other than that, she was a stranger. She could do it. Why hesitate? Takahashi didn’t say it, nor did anyone mention it, but everyone knew that stopping the mechanical god would mean killing Aoba and the rest of the citizens of Yokohama. They all believed in her unconditionally, and she thought she could do it herself. But the moment push came to shove… “I can’t…” It was too tall an ask. “I can’t…kill a friend…” How lame. Pathetic. The words she said to Machina and Hizuki in that tiny Chinese restaurant that day came back to her. “Seriously? The whole time during that scene I was just, like, kill him already!” “I’m basically, like, a pragmatist, y’know? I can’t stand those melodramatic tropes where they’re debating whether to kill somebody. Just get it over with! Quit it with the half-assed compromises!” “Heck yeah! I’d just put you out of your misery! Instantly!” She thought making the immediate choice was the cool thing to do in such moments. And that was why she would never amount to anything. She couldn’t be a Hero or a Demon Lord. Not even a minion. She told her she would show her the world. She promised her they would go outside together. She wanted her to live, to see so many things, to enjoy so many things. Her smile came to mind, and her hand shook and paused. She was only two. “Takahashi.” She heard a voice. A familiar voice. An individual piece of data coming from the melted-together vortex. “I…” Takahashi looked up and saw a girl she knew very well. Was it a mirage brought about by the exposure to the excessive data stream? A bug born from the cache of the souls in the cycle of reincarnation? A delusion her overwhelmed brain was showing her? Or…a miracle produced by the irregularity of the homunculus created from the soul of the dragon’s shrine maiden with the most individuality of all? No one knew. Not even God. However, Takahashi understood—not by logic, but by gut—that this could not be a miracle. “I didn’t like you.” “…” “You were so cheerful, so knowledgeable, so kind. I was jealous. I envied you… I felt so small whenever I was near you. It made me painfully aware that I had nothing… But you grabbed my hand and showed me hope… Honestly, I’m bitter. I’m so bitter that I’ll never go outside with you.” She wasn’t being sincere. Takahashi knew she was only saying that to make her dislike her. To encourage her, to steel her resolve, so she would do it without hesitation or regret. She spoke spitefully, obviously forcing herself, clearly unable to hide what a good girl she really was. Takahashi was furious. How could she be mindful of others until the very end? “So please. Even though I hate you, I can only ask you. Please…put an end to us. To me. I want it to be you. No one else. You, Takahashi.” The words she’d once said came to mind: “I want to visit the outside, too.” “Really? Having you as a sister would make me very…happy…Takahashi.” Takahashi wanted a little sister. Or rather, she wanted to be a big sister. She was an only child, so she wanted a younger family member. Ahhh… And…Aoba felt like a real sister. I was so happy. “Ah…” It was just a short time, but she connected with her. “UWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!” The lingering attachment, the regret, the hope that a miracle could happen and she could be saved—the despair. There were no such things as miracles. Takahashi did away with all that, slashed through the emotions, and pressed the enter key on the 3D keyboard, activating the virus Iconoclast. A single word in the Atlas’s perfect spell was deleted. Then the first of the six great laws of magicology materialized: Magic does not permit contradictions. The domino pieces fell over, the block tower collapsed. The logical contradiction in the technic caused a chain reaction. It vanished. It evaporated. The light vortex disappeared. The ten thousand souls returned to the sea of aether. The moment all the data was deleted, Takahashi heard a voice. Thank you, Sis. The steel god crumbled. “This can’t be.” Without the technic to hold it up, the Atlas was nothing but iron scrap. It fell under its own weight as its parts crumbled. The steel remains falling into the ocean splashed up the water much like the city it destroyed. “…This simply cannot be.” One small child unraveled the god. “…This can’t be possible!” It was preposterous. “I’m a god! A perfect being! I cannot lose! I carry the faith of my ten thousand people! How can I possibly lose?!” He couldn’t die yet. “Hya-hya-hya… G-gods don’t die.” Before the divine body collapsed, he uploaded his datafied soul to his true body. The armor protecting the true body was purged. He pulled the cables from inside the liquid aether and revealed his human body. An old man, frail like a newborn fawn. “If I die…then who…who will guide the world to peace?!” He had to run. Across the vast, empty sea. He could still do it all over. Because he was God. “We’ll take our world back from this mistake! Let’s go to Paradise!” His ambition was put to an end. The Holy Sword of the Hero who ran across the surface of the water. The kick of the Black Dragon who was back in human form. And the Demon Lord’s Dark Sword. They chopped his head off, crushed it, and pierced his heart. His thoughts sped up as though time had stopped right before his consciousness was cut off. Can’t remember. Can’t r■■ember. C■■■ rem■■■■■. Who was I doing this for? There would be no need to ■■■■ one another over food if peace came. There would be no ne■d to ■■■■■■ neighbors and friends if peace came. If there was peace, ■■■■■■■■■■■■■. Yes. I did it for everyone. Tossed friends into the sea to save what few resources remained. ■■■■■■ parents to let the children live. ■■■■■■■■ the minority to let the majority live. Saved the data of the souls and bodies of eighteen people, both from Earth and from the other world, to get them to survive. Everything was to protect this land, to protect this world, to repay everyone. Yes. I—I…I did it for everyone… For her… For world…peace. He inherited the will of everyone who died from the cold and hunger and guided them to salvation. There was no other way to bring peace to the world but to become God. He reached out to the void—and faded away. The Demon Lord shot the man a pitiful glance. “Rest assured. You said it yourself: You and I share the same goal. I shall bring world peace to fruition.”